Why You Love The Blues: Set Design Magic by Eve Stewart

BBC’s miniseries “The Hour”, now in it’s second season, represents some of the most daring and exacting set design on television. Oscar-nominated production design master (and a professional hero to me), Eve Stewart, brings her talents to this 6-episode drama. Best known for her work on “The King’s Speech”, Stewart creates a lush but subtle world set in in 1950s London.

Stewart balances the use of aqua blues with patterned and textured warm tones. The show’s drama unfolds mostly in the newsroom and it’s offices, painted in shades of grey and blue which evoke logic, modernity, and organization. We see warm colors, wallpaper and fabrics in more private scenes, driven by minor characters or extravagant behavior and events.

I love nearly everything about BBC’s “The Hour”: it’s characters, the writing and the tone. But most of all, I love the visual treasure Stewart has created, in which almost any screen shot or production still could function as a study for an Edward Hopper painting. Each scene in “The Hour” really is a work of art.

Stewart, perhaps best known for her work on “The King’s Speech”, also served as the art director for the upcoming production of Les Miserables. The acting, singing and directing will all be wonderful, I’m sure, but I’m most looking forward to the background.

Hallway from “The King’s Speech”

Stewart’s Production Sketch for “Upstairs Downstairs”, Courtesy of PBS